Dragons of Summer Boredom

Haha, sooooooo, I went and bought myself a Dragonlance module? *ducks tomatoes*

Alright alright alright, lemme back up and justify, here.

Even back in the distant, primordial days of the early 90s, the setting wars were already in full swing. I got turned on to the Forgotten Realms grey box, and therefore was held in sneering contempt by the Dragonlance partisans at the local gaming store. (Meanwhile the Greyhawk holdouts looked on, shaking their heads knowingly and writing angry Usenet posts about Carl Sargent.) And, for my money, DL quickly became the clear harbinger of all that was wrong with 90s (A)D&D. (Never mind that the 2e Realms supplements would soon establish their own list of crimes, more concerned with OCD-inspired meticulous setting detail (read baggage) than the railroady plotwagon excesses of Dragonlance.)

Well, it's a lot of years later, and thanks to the internet I'm all too familiar with the atrocities of Lorraine and the Blumes in the 80s, and while I can see where it's tempting to find a scapegoat for the fall of the golden age, the Realms still don't fit. (See THIS blogpost for a good list of reasons why. ) But the meme still persists, no matter how ill-placed and uninformed the arguments.

So if the 'Hawk diehards are (passionately, heart-breakingly) wrong about FR, it follows that I may have judged Dragonlance a bit harshly as well. I've always enjoyed the fiction (the stuff by Weiss & Hickman, at least - let's ignore Sturm & Kit's moon trip and all that crazy shit), although I'll still maintain that good fiction is often anathema to good gaming. The glut of 2e-style setting supplements and later modules always turned me off, but reading through the 1e Dragonlance Adventures hardcover describes an intriguing (finely-tuned for the desired effect) AD&D setting. So when I had the chance to pick up a used (near-mint) copy of DL1 Dragons of Despair at the friendly local, I went for it. (They have the whole original run, from what I can tell, but I'm not THAT invested quite yet.) The question is: Can this series be run as a "real" campaign, with players who may or may not have read the fiction (probably not), and who don't have any special pre-formed attachment to the setting? And without the rails on? I don't know, yet.

So far, I can at least vouch that DL1 contains a wilderness hexmap (high marks for usefulness), and some interesting encounters. Seems like you could have a good time with the material as presented, and if you were willing to spin some BS should the PCs employ "lateral thinking" (i.e., having the attention span of a cross between a housecat and a superball, like all PCs), things should work out. (I do have the hardcover and a map, I flatter myself that I've got the DM chops to make something interesting out of an aborted run at the "plot", should it come to it.) The question is, does this play out once you're a module or two "deep", and the PCs have had more chances to "rewrite the script"? (Guess I'm gonna have to pick up the next one and see.)

At the very least it's something to read.

- DYA

P.S.: And apparently the cover art above is actually by Clyde Caldwell, not Larry Elmore? I never knew. Suppose I should've guessed, what with the distinct lack of almond eyes and boobies.

Against the Elves (or, "Hacking in the Aardvarkian Age")

Last Tuesday, I promised posts about Mordheim, Epic-scale 40K, Space Hulk/Crusade, and Battlesystem - so, of course, this week we have a post about HackMaster. That's the kind of dodgy and generally evasive journalism you can expect from Mighty Thews - when the audience zigs, we zag. I'M BLOWING UR MIND, RIGHT? Ok, enough of that. Last night I rolled up an obnoxious, greedy, albino aardvarkian fighter who's obsessed with rocks and inherited his father's barbershop. (This, in case you were wondering, is why you fucking love HackMaster.) If you don't read a lot of semi-obscure comics by crazy people, the aardvarkian is based on the lead character of Dave Sim's Cerebus the Aardvark - a short, furry (not THAT kind of furry) Conan retread with a fondness for the drink and recreational violence (and, according to Sim, the voice of George C. Scott). Somebody wrote it up as a HackMaster PC race and got it into the HackJournal, which makes it Hack official. (There was a big hand-wringing contest on the forums over whether this was the death of HackMaster, opening the gates to half-gelatinous cube monks and shit - which just proves how gamers can manage to take even a parody game waaay too seriously.) In any case, this little guy (all 3'9" of him) just needs equipment and he'll be all ready to run in Matt's Against the Elves campaign - where, if all goes according to plan, we will accomplish complete and total pointy-eared genocide on Matt's campaign world (and then, presumably, carry the fight on to wildspace with HackJammer - always did want to smash the Elven Navy, with the friggin' snooty attitude and butterfly ships and everything). This is all because we have a dude in our group who always plays elves, and he loves elves, and is pretty much your typical "elf guy", and even when we aren't playing fantasy he finds a way to basically play elves, and Matt's decided to put an end to it once and for all. Once we pull this off, no more elves in Matty's games, ever. Granted, killing every elf in the world is kind of a tall order, but this is HackMaster after all - if I can find a copy of the 3e Players Handbook from before they banned the nuclear winter fireball spell, we should be fine. * Super psyched to run an aardvarkian. Looks like the little bugger will be a nasty piece of work, too - took the active sense of smell and stealth talents (which, combined with my aardvarkian burrowing ambush ability, will give me assloads of attacks on surprise rounds) and the dirty fighting talent (which will aid in being a vicious little knee-biter), and my military training rolls came out pretty cherry, so I got a bunch of free skills and proficiencies. We'll see how he holds up in actual combat - I have high hopes. - DYA * This is not actually going to happen - as HackMaster started actual publication with the 4th edition, the 3rd edition PHBs are understably hard to come by, har har - but I think we'll get our hands on the spell anyway, just wait and see. ;) P.S.: FB sure has my number - thoughtfully offered me a sponsored link to Viking Intelliwash Dishwasher this morning, which is clearly relevant to my interests. GOOD JOB, TARGETED MARKETING ROBOTS.